Monday, 23 November 2015

How does Regression Test ensure Better Functioning of Application?

Most enterprises nowadays make changes to the
systems at regular intervals to make their software applications deliver richer
user experience. The changes made to the system can be either functional or
non-functional. For instance, a business may add new functionality to its
software, upgrade to the latest version of a technology, modify the existing system
configuration, or install security patches and updates. That is why; modern testers
have to frequently deal with changes made to both functional and non-functional
areas of a system.

Likewise, the QA professionals also need to
ensure that the functionality and performance of the application remain intact
despite changes made to the system. They perform regression tests to identify
the new flaws or bugs created due to changes made to the system. They also need
to conduct several tests again to assess the changes in the application’s
behaviour and performance more accurately in the changed environment. Thus,
regression testing ensures that the applications functions flawlessly despite
the changes made to the system.

Understanding Important Benefits of Regression Testing

ØOften the changes made to the system
or application results in new bugs or flaws. So the functionality and
performance of an application is affected each time they system or application
is modified. The QA professionals can easily identify the bugs and flaws
generated due to these changes by conducting regression testing. The
programmers can work on the flaws identified by the testers, and make the
software application perform flawlessly despite the changes.

ØWhenever the operating environment
of an application is modified, the modification has several side-effects. For
instance, when a business switches from one operating system to another, the
new operating environment will have a direct impact on the application’s functionality.
Likewise, the functionality of the application will be impacted at the time of
migrating to an upgraded version of the platform. The QA professionals can
conduct regression tests repeatedly to identify and eliminate such
side-effects.

ØMany QA professionals nowadays try
to effectuate integration testing through regression tests. Instead on
performing integration testing in a conventional way, they prefer running
regression tests to assess the performance of the application more accurately.
They simply run regression tests after all modules or components of the
software are integrated to ensure that the application runs flawlessly in the
specific environment.

ØThe enterprises frequently add new
features and functionality to their applications to enhance their popularity
and profitability. Each time a new feature is added to the software or some bug
in fixed by developers, the code base changes. There are always chances that
the changes made to the code will have a negative impact on the application’s
functionality. The QA professionals can perform regression testing to ensure
that the application functions flawlessly despite changes made to the code.

ØIn addition to assessing the
functionality of the application after changes are made to the system,
regression testing also helps QA professionals to track the quality of the
output. For instance, regression testing of a compiler can be conducted to
assess the size of the code base or determine the amount of time required for
executing test suites. The testers can further execute the test cases
repeatedly to ensure that the code base is easy to manage and maintain.

As enterprises frequently make changes to their
systems, regression testing becomes repetitive and continuous. So a business
can always consider automating its regression testing efforts to get accurate
test results within a shorter amount of time. The regression testing tools will
make it easier for testers to execute existing test suites quickly, and create
new test cases easily according to the changes made to the system.